Aside from a few minor scratch building projects such as building a loading ramp I have never tackled a major scratch building project. This seemed like the ideal situation to try my hand at scratch building a pedestrian overpass.
I started with the following samples of pictures from the Internet:
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Next I searched online for building code measurements of handrail height, rise over run of stairs, etc.
As for the supporting structure I had on hand a large number of styrene girders and various iron work left over from a large trestle I had build a number of years ago using several Micro Engineering steel trestle kits. Here is a sample (the partially completed items are the beginnings of the supporting towers):
I had nothing for hand rails or stairs that was suitable so I designed in three dimensions and printed the following parts using my 3D printer. I can't believe how useful this 3D printer has been not only in the model railroading hobby but also around the house - it is as useful as my computer printer for paper.
This is the final product.
You can see that both stair cases do not extend on the same side of the bridge section. What you can't see from this picture is that one of them had to be built an angle larger than 90 degrees from the bridge section - about 96 degrees. Both of these features would have required some significant kit bashing of a commercial kit. The design and construction of this bridge was a lot of fun and provided me with something to focus on while isolating from Covid-19.
My next post on July 1 will show the bridge "in situ" on the new Free-mo module along with another scratch built project, this time a building.